Lessons for China to learn from Ukraine conflict for Taiwan scenario

Patchwork_Chimera said:

Coup de Grace, mostly. It's actually surprisingly hard to get a starving, dehydrated island without communication to the outside world, without power, and with their previous leadership probably dead from POI strikes during the air campaign to surrender. Not because they don't want it to be over, but because it's kind of hard to even communicate intention to do so, and it's unclear who even can make that kind of call in the first place lol. What's likely is there'll start to be mass "channel-swim" attempts, violence will break out all over the island to fight over last scraps of food or last bottles of water, and everything remotely "civilization"-like about the island will begin to erode and break down. This would be a very bad scenario to simply let unfold.

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Petrolicious88 said:

I recall as early as a few weeks ago, people were still boasting how the US will not intervene.

US will very likely leverage it's alliance system to militarily intervene in the event of AR. Japan will get involved. South Korea will get involved (esp. if South Korean soldiers are killed on US bases in Korea). Expect Taiwan to resist, expect asymmetrical warfare (its a waste for Taiwan to buy Abrams and F16s), urban warfare, tunnel warfare, etc... plan for the worst. It will be a nasty and costly war.

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Patchwork_Chimera said:

In the real world, most junior enlisted personnel are still pretty much kids, it's fucking scary when you notice it for the first time) will be killed and injured in a bloody, costly campaign of resistance against the PLA advance.

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Patchwork_Chimera said:

Yeah nah, we have exactly zero plans for a meat-shield style strategy of that sort. Our "soft" support (US + NATO provide the bang and the buck, while Ukraine provides the blood) has worked out the way it has in Ukraine because, well, the conflict sorta came to us, and it's pretty much the ideal scenario for it lol. We were never going to send troops. Never. Not a chance lol. While we may not want Ukraine to fall, we also don't consider them meaningful enough to risk fighting the largest war in 70 years to prevent it.

Lackluster Russian performance was pretty much the Ukrainian saving grace, as once Russian forces were de-facto halted, and it became very clear that the war wasn't going to be over any time soon, we figured "well, if they want to degrade the military capability of our scariest conventional land adversary, and all we have to do is keep them supplied with these weapons we have which are purpose built to do just that... hey that works out super great!" A borderline captive-actor Ukraine, who has to keep fighting for national survival, who is on the doorstep of the entire rest of NATO - and therefore can be supplied relatively easily, and who is a lot "closer to home" both literally and psychologically to many Europeans - who is successfully inflicting losses (at a meaningful scale) on the RuGF, all without a single drop of American blood being spilled... that's about as good as it gets lol.

This would not be the case in the WESTPAC. Firstly, there's no real "national survival' fight going on in Japan's case. They're our long time strategic partner, and they have their own interests which misalign with PRC aspirations in the region. Worst case scenario, they lose the Senkakus, which hardly compares to the butcher's bill that fighting the PRC would tally up. While I (and most folks here in DC) do operate under the assumption that they would join us if we were to intervene in a Taiwan conflict, they most certainly would require our meaningful, visible, active participation to have a *hope* of sticking it out longer than a few weeks once they start seeing warheads on foreheads. South Korea, those guys are a complete write off. Nobody here seriously considers them a likely partner in a PRC conflict, and there's a certain rotund individual residing to their North who is responsible for that. ROK participation would result in untold civilian casualties and infrastructural devastation at the hands of the - inferior, yes; but still capable enough to draw blood - KPA. This isn't even mentioning the generally more favorable relationship the PRC and ROK have compared to the... interesting diplomatic rapport between JP and the PRC.

Taiwanese asymmetric resistance, even as much as it's discussed, really isn't something we actually expect, if I'm being brutally honest.

Even if there's lots of talk about it, it's important not to see them just as an extension of US interests in the region. I know lots of folks on this forum see them as basically a US puppet; but I promise, you're overestimating how competent and coordinated we are lol. The ROC isn't suicidal. While it may be militarily beneficial for a US war effort for the ROCA to transition to guerrilla CONOPs, to fly modern "kamikaze" sorties to shoot down at most one PLAAF airframe prior to their own destruction, or to attempt to strike the least impractical targets... what the hell is it all for? In the US's perspective, sure, it makes sense - it's to tie town and degrade PLA forces, planning, admin, and staff capacity, and to help buy us time to marginally regenerate surviving 7FLT AOR forces, and to surge 3/5FLT naval forces, USAF forces, and USMC expeditionary forces. For them? It's not quite so clear. They send - at a minimum - dozens of smart, capable young men and women to their deaths in flying coffins, condemn hundreds more to burning, drowning, suffocating, or bleeding out in anti-shipping strikes at the outset of hostilities, thousands more will die in strikes on basing, C4ISR infrastructure, and other prompt operational fires. Should the PRC initiate the land component of the campaign, and if by that point the US has not been able to degrade the PLA counter-air/shipping complex sufficiently to interdict amphibious shipping and debarked forces, then thousands upon thousands more Taiwanese youth (remember, wars are not fought by hot ripped dudes like in movies. in the real world, most junior enlisted personnel are still pretty much kids, it's fucking scary when you notice it for the first time) will be killed and injured in a bloody, costly campaign of resistance against the PLA advance. The island will be without running water, without sewage treatment, without power, without communications, and will soon be without food, all the while. Many thousands upon thousands more will die fighting a *very* well organized and supported PLANMC/PLAGF amphibious land component force. Remember, in LSCO, it's fires that does all the killing, not the infantry. the infantry just does the dying. Despite all of this bloodletting, the PLA land component force *will* still be able to force Taiwan to bend the knee, unless the US can turn the tide.

It's at this point when you have to ask, what was it all for? OBVIOUSLY the ROC left unsupported stands no meaningful chance. The *only* way they would have a shot in hell at coming out the other side still an independent entity is if the US+JP forces can crack the PLA system of airpower sufficiently to prevent air interdiction over and east of Taiwan, and to destroy enough of the PLAN's maritime capability to allow critical supplies (at a minimum) to get flowing into the island again. Without this, Taiwan can simply be starved into submission if all else fails. The problem is, accomplishing these "guardian angel" objectives are simply, utterly, and completely outside of our military capabilities. It's not going to happen, to put it as bluntly as possible. As a result, from the ROC perspective, what's the point of pursuing such an asymmetric strategy, and enduring all of that bloodshed and hardship if they're just going to end up a PRC province regardless?

Exactly. None.

It's far better to procure a military that is at least able to assist, in any capacity at all, an effort to defend the island conventionally. Should that prove insufficient when combined with the US and JP intervention forces in theater at the outset of hostilities, and should the PLA make it to the beach, and establish debarkation points, it is far better to just throw in the towel and spare the 23 million citizens of Taiwan from such a horrific, fruitless, national self-immolation.

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tphuang said:

We keep talking about this. You make compelling point on why America getting involved is a bad idea. But domestic politics and think tanks would inevitably push America very close to this bad idea.

We keep seeing people like Mark esper going to Taiwan and asking how many taiwanese are willing to die for independence. And taiwanese sees the entire thing as they are doing a favor for us and Japan. So you have America wanting Taiwan to adopt a porcupine strategy and taiwanese people completely unwilling to do so. I agree that it makes sense for America to want that and for taiwanese to oppose it. I don't see that changing since china really isn't going to treat Taiwan that badly after a potential unification. So, at what point do the politicians realize that this entire thing of hoping Taiwan to adopt a porcupine strategy is just not workable?

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Patchwork_Chimera said:

Not saying it'll be a full scale invasion, but I do believe there must be at least (as described before) a "coup-de-grace" even with a small force, which can then proceed to HA/DR tasks, which again, would be a major propaganda victory.

Perhaps I have my impression all wrong, but I simply don't think the PRC would be as keen to sit there watching and waiting for Tsai to pick up the phone (assuming she's alive) and cry uncle, when all it would take to end the war **right then** would be to deploy 2 to 4 PLANMC/PLAGF amphibious brigades from Penghu to a few beachheads, mop up any stubborn local forces right then and there, and to start setting up aid posts and humanitarian facilities to get the citizenry firmly in favor of "let's just end this, I missed food and water a lot."

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vincent said:

It took NATO, the most powerful military alliance on Earth, 78 days of bombing to bring the Former Yugoslavia to its knees.

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Patchwork_Chimera said:

That is what I'm talking about. All we've had to do is just give Ukraine weapons, keep them afloat with cash, thank our lucky stars that Russia performed so poorly, and watch the Ukrainians kill off our enemies for us.

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vincent said:

It took NATO, the most powerful military alliance on Earth, 78 days of bombing to bring the Former Yugoslavia to its knees.

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Patchwork_Chimera said:

Long reply, so here's a link to a text verison:

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Patchwork_Chimera said:

Long reply, so here's a link to a text verison:

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